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Chatting Bull with Dan Dawson - Issue #005

Chatting Bull with Dan Dawson
February 29, 2024

Chatting Bull with Dan Dawson - Issue #005

Chatting Bull with Dan DawsonChatting Bull with Dan Dawson

 

An Ode to the UK Open

 

There are a great many myths in darts: that a bad Premier League campaign will ruin your career (it doesn’t), that 18s is the best way to go for a 118 checkout (it isn’t), and that the crowds at the World Matchplay are the most knowledgeable and enthusiastic in the sport. That last myth is perhaps the most stubborn, but it is quite obviously wrong. If you are looking for hardcore darts fans, then there is only one place you should be searching - and you have to go to a Butlin’s in the very far end of the country for it.

Nathan Aspinall  pumping up the crowd at the Cazoo UK Open.Nathan Aspinall  pumping up the crowd at the Cazoo UK Open.

 

The UK Open is as close as you get in the PDC to a genuine festival of darts.  But to experience it, one must travel to the ends of the Earth, spend more than three days in a holiday camp (during the back end of winter), and there is no guarantee you will see the biggest names in the game for any serious length of time.  That takes commitment, and it shows where the real darts fanatics are.  And the reason they are there is because the UK Open is the most unpredictable and varied tournament in the elite level of the sport.

The field is massive, it is an open draw each round, and we had a different combination of finalists for the first 12 editions of the event.  Even the draw itself at the end of each round is an event.  As a punter, you can cram three very different darts experiences into one mega weekend: Day One on the outside boards, watching even some big name stars competing alongside pub qualifiers; Day Two in the second stage, for slightly longer format matches in an atmosphere not unlike the old Circus Tavern; and then Day Three in the main arena with 4,000 fans for the culmination of the tournament.  In my opinion, the UK Open offers the best fan experience of any major event in the PDC - although it should be said that I am easily amused by those grabber machines where you win a teddy bear, as long as you have shovelled £30 in loose change into them first.

Butlin’s Minehead (which also hosts the Players Championship Finals in November) may only be one bus stop closer than Atlantis for most people, we may be visiting in some of the bleakest times of the year, and the UK Open prize money may be dwarfed by some of the other major tournaments - but I believe it has a genuine claim nowadays to being “The Home of World Darts”. It is the perfect complement to the cycle of World Series and Premier League darts, which has started the year with the same select players facing off repeatedly against one another.

This unlikely venue is where we first saw Rob Cross, an unknown electrician at the time.  It is where the binman Barry Lynn beat Gary Anderson (“he empties your bin, he empties your bin, he beat the World Champion, his name’s Barry Lynn”).  It is where Andrew Gilding won the whole thing last year.  It is where dreams are realised.  It is darts.

 

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Issue #005 Quiz Answers

1) Michael Smith
2) Two
3) Six

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